1. Field of the Invention
This invention is concerned with the insect traps, and particularly with traps for flying insects such as houseflys.
2. Prior Art
A variety of insect traps are known to the art. Broadly, such traps may be characterized as primarily adapted for crawling insects particularly responsive to odors or for flying insects particularly responsive to both odors and light. Among the traps for crawling insects, such as ants, is the apparatus disclosed in British Pat. No. 1,391,643.
Among the traps suitably primarily for flying insects have been a variety of traps adapted for use with an open mouthed receptacle, sometimes a conventional canning jar, such as disclosed in: U.S. Pat. No. 1,772,729; British Pat. No. 7,121; and Norwegian Pat. No. 85,185.
The prior art insect traps, however, have disadvantages in use such as undesirably attracting crawling insects, for example ants, by the sweet smelling bait taught necessary to lure the flying insects through the structural intricacies of the trap, requiring that the traps contain liquid to drown the trapped insects before they otherwise escape from the simplicities of the trap, requiring poisoned bait, or requiring visual acuity for proper assemblage and subsequent attention by the person employing the trap.
Relatively simple flying insect traps are known wherein the flying insects enter holes in closed top tubular member, suspended in a jar mouth by a screen or the like, proceed downwardly into the jar and cannot find their way back out. Such prior art traps are generally relatively expensive to manufacture, particularly since attachment to the screen is generally accomplished by hand using tape, glue or the like. In some cases screen attachment is not provided and the tubular member has a larger external dimension near its top whereby it is loosely held in a hole in the screen. This has the serious disadvantage of making the tubular member relatively easy to accidently displace from its use position. Such non-screen attached tubular members have been made in two pieces with a cap snapping in place over a tube, with both the cap and tube having pairs of aligned orifices and with the skirt of the cap providing the larger external dimension of the tubular member which sits upon the screen. However, such snapping in place has not automatically aligned the orifices in the cap and tube. Thus, assembly requires considerable time and visual acuity thereby increasing production time and costs. Thus, although such traps are efficient non-polluting and ecologically desirable, they have not been available as low cost mass produced items.
Accordingly, the present invention is designed to provide an insect trap suitable particularly for flying insects which is useful in combination with a conventional, open mouthed receptacle, as well as providing a trapping assemblage which is inexpensive to manufacture, rapidly and simply assembled without requiring visual acuity by the person assemblying the trap, will not be easily displaced from its use position, and which does not create additional insect nuisances or hazards to humans.